The method may also be used in less densely populated area, e.g. rural, to avoid the need to widen or build highways.
The present invention relates to the field of scheduling and dispatching transportation service for profit to improve mobility in densely populated urban areas for riders without physical mobility limitations.
Transportation is an important part of everyone""s life. Movement of people and goods is essential to the healthy economy of an urban area which has largely relied on private vehicles for accomplishing that task. Growth in urban areas has made such reliance increasingly ineffective and extremely expensive in money, space, energy and ecological consequences. Yet a healthy urban economy requires a smooth and efficient transportation system.
The modes of travel available to most people in urban areas are transit either rail or bus, car or van pool, taxi, private car, motorized bikes, bicycle, foot or some combination of them.
The increasing congestion on roads has caused governments to give more attention to transit since the 1960s, but it has proven too inflexible, unreliable and slow to meet the needs of many urban residents, who generally must make one or more transfers to reach their destination. Each transfer increases the travel time. Waiting at bus stops or transit stations exposes the rider to crime as well as discomfort. Transit has generally concentrated on servicing routes rather than individuals. The routes are designed to cover large areas so that a single rider must accept indirect travel to reach the desired destination. This can add considerable to the rider""s travel time.
Experimentation with customized travel (paratransit) by transit agencies has been generally limited to service in low density areas or for seniors and for the mobility limited population under the American Disability Act never to high density urban areas for general mobility. Their use of some elements of the logistic technology have not proven economical because agency constraints on the service limiting the population served and the hours of service.
Another inconvenience of public transit is the requirement for payment at time of service which generally necessitates the rider to carry cash in a credit card society. SmartCard and passes have relieved this to some extent.
In the Washington D.C. area rail transit has reached its capacity and government subsidies are not available to expand. Car and vanpooling has provided some relief. Carpools are dependent on a willing unpaid driver and is rarely available for trips other than to and from the workplace. Because the car driver is a private individual, it is prohibitive for her/him to carry insurance for his riders so they dependent on their own insurance.
Vanpools are generally sponsored by an employer or business since the cost of vans is considerably more than cars. While insurance is carried on the van, the use of a non-professional driver in employment situations still subjects the riders to greater risk. In cases where professional drivers are used, the limitation of service restricts the points of travel or increases the travel time. Hotel shuttles, for example, may be limited to trips to and from the airport at specific hours. Independent airport shuttles on the other hand are expensive because of the small number of riders available for the service. The size of the rider pool frequently requires tortuous routing to serve each rider, thus adding time and distance to the trip.
Carpools and most most vanpools do not address the non-work trips for shopping and entertainment that enhances city life. In a high pressure society where time is scarce, the average person depend on a car to meet travel needs. In the Washington, D.C. area as in many urban areas, many people who use transit still need to drive to rail and bus stops. Once a person owns a car, the tendency is to use it since the major cost is the capital cost of the vehicle. The cost of car ownership averages $6000 or about 11% of annual income. The instability of fuel prices creates considerable anxiety for middle income riders. In addition to the operating and capital cost, there are parking fees and traffic tickets and personal time spend in maintaing and parking the car.
Taxis which can deliver customized service is unaffordable to most for regular trips. The car owner will only relinquish the vehicle if there is assurance of total mobility needs being met.
The high use of private cars has pushed roadways beyond the limit of their capacity. Traffic gridlock has become a way of life in large cities. Studies on the D.C. area found that the average driver spends 72 hours a year in gridlock, amount to 240 billion hours for the area. This wastes not only the personal time of the residents but also detracts from the labor productivity available to the economy.
More highways and infrastructure has been demonstrated to be only a short term solution since they reach capacity very quickly after completion and encourage more traffic rather than diverting much traffic from existing roads. Construction has become increasingly controversial and challenged by environmental interests groups, so that approval for construction takes almost as long as the actual task.
This method has the advantage of flexibility not provided by transit which has been traditionally route-oriented and of economy over taxi because grouped riders share the expense of the trip. The only long term solution to reducing traffic without decreasing mobility is to more efficiently deploy vehicles so that one vehicle can carry multiple passengers with similar origin, destination, and time of travel.
The average annual cost to a subscriber for such service can be less than the cost of car ownership. Each trip is customized to the actual needs of the riders so that the trip is faster than regular route transit. It is more convenient than express bus or rail because service is from door to door. In those cases where express bus or rail will be more efficient, the service will deliver the rider to the stop or station to meet the bus or train and provide SmartCards or passes to the rider as needed. If the 55% of solo drivers reported to dislike driving alone were grouped into 3 or more persons in a vehicle operated by a professional driver, traffic will be reduced by more than one-third.
The present method combines the economy of the internet with highly developed logistics technology for moving vehicles to the point of need and with the communication advantage of wireless mobile devices to alert the driver around traffic congestion as well as locate a driver when a spontaneous travel request is phoned in.
There is little or no wait time for the rider because the vehicle comes to the location at an agreed time. Without the need to drive one""s own car, the anxiety of fuel price instability is negligible. The rider saves time and cost when freed of car maintainence.
For the drivers the advantages will be assurance of a steady revenue not generally available to taxi or shuttle services. That assurance combined with efficient dispatching that reduces waste mileage and idle time produces a greater return per hour than for other entrepreneurial driver services.
For both rider and driver safety is increased. Riders do not have to wait at lonely bus stops. Private drivers are not frustrated by, unfamiliar roads and directions. Professional drivers are not threatened by having to pick up strangers off the street, nor are they the target of crime since no money is exchanged at the time of travel.
With more professional drivers and less private drivers car accidents will decrease and road rage will become rare. As more and more riders subscribe to the service, more cars will be taken off the road and less gridlock will occur. When gridlock does occur, central dispatchers monitoring traffic alerts can notify the affected driver using the wireless communication device and assist the driver to redirect the trip.
The advantages to the community are many. Grouping riders in a common area to travel together provides time for community interaction. With less time spent traveling, more time is available for home and work. Less car on the road means less ecological damage.
When applied in less densely populated areas, e.g. rual, the competitive advantage to a subscriber may be less than in a city, but to the governing entity the time and cost of the system and time to implement would be much less than road infrastructure, e.g. widening or building highways. In such cases where the costs to the subscriber is less attractive, the decrease in taxes or state subsidy may encourage implementing the method.